


Pale Shelter

by Bunn1cula



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, and hurt/hurt too ofc, and if this does happen there WILL be smut, and one chapter only, bc im an awful rabbit, but you'll have to stay tuned to see, if we get a relationship tag or not, more creepy endor, please be advised there is one instance of attempted rape in one chapter, possible enemies to lovers, the good old enemies having to work together to survive trope
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-05 17:59:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17329778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bunn1cula/pseuds/Bunn1cula
Summary: After getting separated from her strike team on Endor, instead of Wicket the Ewok, Leia encounters General Veers. Fighting against injuries and a hostile environment, they must work together to survive...if they don’t kill each other first.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I usually post complete works, but I've got so many WIPs now that I'm hoping if I start to share some multichapter fics I may actually find a reason to finish them. Consider this Experiment No. 1.
> 
> Tears for Fears gives us the title.

When Leia flutters open her eyes, everything is green. When her vision comes into focus, the verdant blur resolves into shadowed ferns and lichens and sedges.

She groans. Everything hurts.

The ground is cool and damp on her cheek. It feels good, and it’s tempting to keep resting there until something tickles the fingers of her right hand. Something chitinous is skittering over her knuckles and she springs to her knees in time to see the last half of some species of enormous centipede disappearing into the tall sawgrass. 

She can’t suppress the hard shudder that rumbles through her, and her heart is a taut band snapping in her chest. 

She’s never been much of an outdoorswoman, and things like that are exactly the Nine Hells why. 

She pulls herself to a hunched standing position and her back screams in indignant protest. A hand on her lumbar, she slowly straightens until she can see over the fallen tree trunk in front of her. 

The view is the same in every direction: hulking trees, thick shrubs, hanging vines and damp earth. 

She takes off her helmet and hooks it to her belt. Where the hell is she? And where is Luke?

A tight, panicky feeling grips her chest when she realizes she’s all alone. Deep in a forest in hostile territory. Without water, supplies, or even so much as a compass. 

Perhaps this hastily-planned mission hadn’t been such a good idea. 

The last she’d seen of Luke, he had dropped back to take out the two Imperial scouts on speeder bikes that had ran up on them while they pursued the first two. And the last thing she remembers before waking up on the ground was being thrown off her bike when the scout she’d been chasing landed a blaster shot on her bike’s right thrust flap.

She has no idea where Luke may have ended up but she hopes it’s back with Han and Chewie and the rest of the team. Wherever they are. 

She looks around and considers her options. Option one is to stay put and hope someone comes back to find her. Option two is to strike out, hopefully in the right direction, and try to find the group on her own. 

Leia has never been the passive sort. She checks that the safety is off on her holstered blaster and picks the direction her gut tells her is best. 

It’s not scientific by any means, but her gut has been right far more often than wrong ever since she can remember. It had practically screamed at her that Han was a scoundrel right away, after all. His smug mug had never fooled her, and she saw right past his insouciant charm from day one. 

Some things never changed. But then, _some_ things did. 

 _Han_. Scruffy, hotheaded Han. How she’d managed to fall in love with him of all people, she’d never understand, but somehow, fallen she had. The two of them are like neodymium magnets in each other’s presence, and woe be to anyone that finds themselves caught in the gravity pull between them. 

But something is up with him. Ever since they met up with the rest of the fleet over Sullust, he hasn’t been right. She doesn’t know why, but there is a subtle, nagging distance between them. Though of course he denies it. 

When she’d told him on Bespin that she loved him she had meant it. Those weren’t just desperate last words; she was prepared to face that truth and everything that came after it if he survived the carbonite freeze. She had never imagined any other outcome than being with him if they were ever reunited. 

Being apart from him was hard, and sometimes it felt like an insurmountable feat to hold onto the hope that he’d return. There were times she’d lain awake at night and forced herself to consider the real possibility that she may never see him again. Luke was forever throwing an arm around her and telling her not to be a pessimist. Even while he was still confined to the medical frigate after his own father had amputated his right hand with a lightsaber. 

It’s hard for him to understand that she’s just always been a realist and things didn’t always happen the way you thought they should.

Getting Han back from Jabba’s disgusting slime pit had been her sole obsession for an entire year. When she finally held him in her arms, hibernation sickness leaving him helpless as a newborn loth-kitten, it felt like a miracle after everything they’d gone through to get there. 

But things had not progressed the way she wanted. The fantasies she’d occasionally let slip through just before she fell asleep, the ones where they fell into bed and very athletically worked out the four years of pent-up feelings and sexual frustration they’d put themselves through, still had yet to manifest in real life. 

He acts like nothing is wrong—he is his usual charming Mister Devil-May-Care around his friends and colleagues, and still playfully flippant around her—but she knows, _knows_ , that something is wrong. Something is bothering him, but for the life of her she can’t get out of him  what it is. 

Though she hasn’t let him see it, it’s been making her crazy, and more than a little annoyed. And it had probably clouded her judgement when this farkled mission was being put together. Letting that happen was stupid and dangerous and she knows she needs to quit devoting any brainpower whatsoever to trying to figure him out.

Screw him. Just…seriously. Screw him. 

Climbing over another fallen log, she winces as she drops the short distance to the ground on the other side. The pain that shoots through her left ankle only serves to annoy her further. Muttering a curse, she gingerly tests to see if it will continue bearing weight and it does, so she puts that out of her mind, too. 

Twigs and leaves and occasional acorns crackle under her boots as she walks, and her sightline is no different from when she started. Every direction is thick with green vegetation and thick coniferous tree trunks. It’s actually kind of beautiful, and she starts noticing details: pink flowers clinging to the bark of a huge tree, iridescent beetles climbing over and under composting leaves, spotted red birds with yellow crests spying on her from the safety of high, lush boughs. 

There is a particular smell here as well. It’s soft petrichor and sharp resin, cool camphor and warm cedar. Rich, rude sweetness of leaves decomposing into humus.

It makes her wish she had spent more time appreciating places like this on Alderaan. 

 

An hour later, she trudges on, still ignoring the aches and pains from having hit the ground at a hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. She doesn’t even want to think about how things could have turned out had she not been wearing a helmet.

The landscape hasn’t changed drastically from where she set out, and it has become disorienting. The trees and shrubs and shadows all look the same no matter how long she walks. She can’t even be sure she isn’t walking in circles.

Winded from the increasing effort it takes to hike on what is now a very swollen ankle, she takes a seat on a gnarled old tree trunk and heaves a sigh. Being hurt and lost has pissed her off to no end. 

It’s when she’s swallowing a swig from her canteen that she registers the silence. 

The bird calls have stopped. They were all making a high racket just a little while ago—where have they gone?

A chill passes through her. _Why_ have they gone?

The forest feels empty except for the trees and and the rocks and an oppressive dead calm. She sits as still as she can, fighting a primal fear that begs her to run—any direction, it doesn’t matter, just _run—_ and listens. 

Aside from her own pulse beating a drum roll against her eardrums, the only thing she hears is the rustle of leaves in a sudden breeze, high up in the canopy. 

But she realizes it is no breeze when she spies the flash of a green-skinned tail streaking through the swaying tree branches overhead. There are a few terrifying seconds of silence, then the cracking sounds of splitting timber as whatever she’s just seen hurtles through the wood straight to the ground and lands hard enough to shake the ferns all around her. 

Somehow she manages to stifle the scream that rises within her from the deepest depths of her primal fears. It catches in her throat as she pushes off from the dead tree trunk and scrambles, nearly falling, away—away, it doesn’t matter where, just _away_ from whatever that thing is—into a dense thicket.

Blinded by fear, the pain of her ankle erased by surging adrenaline, she runs for what seems like hours through a blur of browns and greens until her burning lungs can take no more. She collapses to the ground onto her back, gulping down air until her heart no longer threatens to burst from her chest. Her senses begin returning and she hears birds and the wind in the high tree branches. 

She is safe. Comparatively speaking, anyway. 

Sitting up, she surveys her surroundings. Everything looks more or less the same as the place she just fled. She wonders for the second time today if she’s led herself in a circle, but when she spies a crumpled panel of lusterless grey metal propped against a nearby giant redwood trunk, she knows she’s made it somewhere else. 

She stands— _oh, damn this ankle!_ —and gingerly hobbles to the scuffed-up sheet of matte durasteel. It could be from a ship; Endor lies in an area long-rumored to be a sort of Devil’s Triangle (though Leia dismissed that idea as a hoax of Imperial invention the moment she’d heard it). 

The panel is cool to touch, which means it hasn’t plummeted through the atmosphere anytime recently, but there is no opportunistic vegetation growing over it, either. It can’t have been there long. 

Curiosity getting the better of her, Leia straightens and peers around the area for signs of any more wreckage. She knows she should probably move along to look for signs of water instead, but something propels her want to solve this particular mystery. After all, there isn’t supposed to be any combat going on here, and if the Imperial Navy is blowing civilian ships out of the sky, Leia damn well wants to know about it. 

Sure enough, she soon finds another twisted piece of durasteel, this one laid across the splayed-out center of a giant fern. Again, matte grey, but this time streaked with what looks like black soot. The edges are curled and jagged as if detonated outward from whatever it used to protect. 

She follows the trail, slowly on her bad ankle, until she emerges into a small clearing. There, she finds the source of the debris, surrounded by blackened, split tree trunks and shredded shrubs. The ground cover has been scorched away, leaving only what appears a blast wave of dirt, and in the middle of that dark earth lies what was once a scout transport. 

“A chicken walker,” she mutters under her breath. Imperials. The hairs on her forearms prickle like quills and she unholsters her blaster. 

There isn’t much left intact of the walker, and what does remain is carbon-scored to pitch, leading Leia to surmise that it must have exploded. But how? An accident? Surely it couldn’t have been in an attack. 

She is toeing through a small pile of debris when she catches sight of something grey and squishy-looking. Her heart sinks a little when she guesses what it is but she bends onto one knee to get a closer look despite the growing squeamishness in her belly. 

It’s definitely flesh; or, used to be. It stinks like meat that’s gone bad in a broken food cooler. 

Heedless against the voice inside her head begging her to leave it be, she kicks away the rest of the debris from atop the pallid, mottled flesh to reveal an eyeball. 

A perfectly intact brown-irised eyeball with two nerves trailing behind it like snapped wires, the cloudy grey pupil staring accusingly at her as if she was responsible for its current situation.

Gasping, she loses her balance and falls backwards onto her ass. She hitches back a gag before scrabbling to her feet and spinning around to get the hell away from it. 

She doesn’t know the rock is there until she’s already falling forward and the ground is rushing at her face. Her ankle screams with fresh agony as it twists on her way down. She lands prone, onto her solar plexus. The impact knocks the wind out of her lungs and the blaster from her hand.

She groans and raises her face from the dirt for the second time that day and that’s when she sees him. Two wide-set eyes with green irises peering at her from a pile of underbrush. If they hadn’t been open so big, they may have blended right into the scenery. 

But she sees the whites first and springs to grab for the blaster she’s dropped. The eyes remain where they are and once she has the blaster again she trains the barrel right between them. “Move one millimeter and I will blast you straight to the bottom of the nine Hells.” 

The eyes obey, blinking only once. Slowly. 

Leia gets into a crouched position and, with one hand keeping the blaster in place, she uses the other to pull away some of the underbrush that he’s obviously gathered there to hide himself. _From what?_

She pulls away a large fern frond to reveal the man beneath. He’s an Imperial all right, dressed in a torn and bloodstained grey jumpsuit and an olive green cuirass. Probably an officer; he’s older and doesn’t look like he was ever a grunt, even with his face streaked with dirt and crusted blood beneath a bent-up helmet. 

And then, _curse the stars, every single one of them!_ , she realizes she knows who he is—she’s seen his face and read his dossier a hundred times before in intel reports—and that he is staring at her in the same shock of recognition.

“Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan,” he wheezes first. “Or should I call you ‘Senator?’”

“General Veers,” she replies, trying to keep her voice from shaking, both hands now on the blaster. ‘Or should I call you the ‘Butcher of Hoth?’”


	2. Chapter 2

“I’ve always rather liked that one,” groans Veers, improbably flippant. “It’s the least embarrassing epithet I’ve been given over the years.”

“How nice for you, because that one will be your legacy,” says Leia through gritted teeth. “I’m taking you in. The Alliance will have you answer for your war crimes.”

This elicits a weak, though genuinely amused, laugh. “If by ‘war crimes’ you mean combatting  treasonous radicals and guerrillas, then so be it.”

 _And I thought Han was deluded._ “Nice,” she sneers, wondering why she is even entertaining this conversation. She waves the blaster. “Come on, stand up, hands in the air.”

“I don’t think so.”

“What does that mean? Get up.”

“It means, Princess, that I am broken. So unless you can deadlift and carry more than twice your weight, I’m not going anywhere.”

She stands to her full height, keeping the blaster on him. “What happened here?”

“Exactly what it looks like.” He shifts slightly and grimaces. 

“Your walker blew up.”

“You _are_ a sharp bunch in Rebel High Command, aren’t you?”

Leia notices for the first time the grotesque angle of his upper right arm. She involuntarily winces at the sight, but her instinctive sympathy freezes when she meets his gaze again. His eyes are narrow, hard as olivite, and dead as a droid’s. 

He is not someone to feel sorry for. He is someone to capture and lock up and then melt the keypad. “I meant how. And by whom.”

He holds eye contact with her but is silent and his craggy stone face gives away nothing. 

“Have it your way,” she shrugs. “It makes no difference to me. However it happened, it’s made you my prisoner.”

He snorts. “I fail to see how you will ever get me to your interrogators. Do you even know where you are?”

“Of course I do.”

“For a politician, you are a surprisingly dismal liar.”

She rolls her eyes. Politician jokes have irked her since grammar school. Fortunately, her father had been charismatic enough to keep her from being sent down whenever she blackened a few eyes. 

She pushes aside the memory. This is no time for wistful remembrances of Bail. “You don’t need to worry about logistics.”

“In that case, madame, I consign myself to both your capable custody and feminine tactical wisdom.”

“Careful, General. Your castration complex is showing.” 

This finally, blessedly, shuts him up. She turns and takes a few steps back the way she came, careful with her ankle—but not _too_ careful; she can’t afford to reveal any weaknesses. Each footfall feels like she’s stepped into a bear trap, but she moves steadily, however slowly. 

“Where are you going?” he calls. 

“To find water.” She gingerly steps around what looks like one of the walker’s charred footpads. 

“You won’t find any that way.”

“Who says?” she fires back, irritated by both her pain and his arrogance. 

“The topographical nav datacard, for one. But what do the Survey Corps know? Evidently not as much as you.”

She makes a noise of disgust and continues on her way, pushing aside a giant fern frond in her path. 

“Princess?” he calls again, his voice smaller.  

“What?” 

“Before you leave…do you have any water at all in your canteen?”

She considers allowing him a sip from what little is left, but she needs it for the walk. Besides, she doesn’t want to get that close to him. 

She shakes her head. “It’ll be full when I bring it back. You can have some then. So don’t go anywhere.” She turns her back to him and starts her march. 

“If you go in that direction for water, I’ll be dead by the time you come back with it.”

 _Tempting_. She heaves a sigh, keeping her back to him. “Which way, then?”

“Zero-point-eight-one klicks north-northwest.”

“Well, that’s certainly specific.”

“You’re damn right—at least one of us read a map before landing here. Do you have a direction finder?”

“No.”

“Stars, what _did_ you bring?”

She whirls to face him. “A burning hatred for the Empire and all the people like you in it.”

“I’m sure that’s very inspirational to you, but it won’t lead you to water. Or back to your team.” Groaning, he shifts a little to one side. “There’s a nav finder on my belt. Take it with you.”

“I’m not going anywhere near your belt. Toss it here.”

“ _I can’t_ ,” he snarls through gritted teeth. “My bloody arm is broken and I can’t reach it.”

She regards him and considers the situation. There are three possibilities: one: she goes for the nav finder and he grabs her or her blaster and kills her. Two: she leaves without the nav and either finds water or doesn’t. Three: she takes the nav without any ruses from him, and she finds water. 

It dawns on her she doesn’t even have to come back once her canteen is filled. What does she owe him for anything? He deserves to die out here after the carnage on Hoth alone.

But she realizes the inestimable intelligence value of having him as a prisoner. And the sheer morale boost it would give everyone, from the most junior foot soldier to Mon Mothma herself, knowing they had The Butcher. 

She wonders if dragging General Veers aboard Home One on a leash would be what it takes to make Han finally take her the hell to bed. 

For fuck’s sake. Not this again.

“All right,” she says, bringing up her blaster once again. “I’m coming to get it, but if I see you so much as even twitch, I will blast your face clean through the back of that helmet.”

“You won’t even know I’m alive, Your Highness.”

“Don’t tempt me.” 

She’s walking gingerly, practically tiptoeing toward him, in a clearing that is suddenly silent as a  morning dead-strewn battlefield. Her footsteps crackle across the clearing like firesnaps on a Mid-Autumn Moon Festival night in Little Koto-Si Town back in Aldera. 

Mid-step, she freezes and darts her eyes from side to side. Her heart jumps like a spooked loth-cat. She knows this silence. She locks eyes with Veers and sees that he does, too. 

There’s hardly a sound, just a brief whoosh of wind, before she feels a hard punch to the back, knocking the wind from her lungs and her feet out from under her. She flies forward, for a split second weightless, until everything spins and her shoulder slams into something hard and she’s on her side and grinding an impressive path in the earth straight towards Veers’ weirdly concerned big white eyeballs. 

“Get up!” he shouts. “Get under something! Quickly!”

“ _Where?!_ ” she wants to scream, because there is absolutely nowhere to go _,_ but the sound won’t come and she hears the thing circling back, slicing through the air like an invisible scimitar. 

Desperate, she whirls back towards the wreckage of the scout walker. There’s a sheet of durasteel amidst the scrap, probably a hatch panel and no bigger than a bed pillow, but it’s the only shot she has at any sort of cover. It will have to do. 

Staying low, she scrabbles and hurls herself the short distance to the panel. As her fingers meet the metal, the slicing sound above is accompanied by a bloodcurdling shriek hurtling towards her and ice water shoots through her veins.

She thinks she is too late— _kriff_ , _this is really going to hurt_ —but she grabs for the panel anyway and her fingers improbably latch around a handle. Gripping it as hard as she can, she flings herself onto her back and holds the panel aloft with both her hands and feet. 

Seemingly in slow motion, the thing hits as soon as she is underneath the panel and the impact drives the handle—along with her knuckles—into her face. Warm liquid drains from her nostrils and into her ears, and it occurs to her that the sound of the creature colliding against the metal is uncannily similar to that of the gong being struck whenever that creepy clown made a stupid joke on that old holonet kids show. 

What a thing to remember when you’re about to die.

The creature bounces off the panel and careens into the dirt. She gets a millisecond’s view of it before it leaps aloft again; it’s reptilian, with a thick green hide and rust-colored wings and the face of a saurian raptor. Its maw looks like the perfect meat-shredding machine. 

Leia knows she won’t be so lucky when the creature returns for a second attack, and she scrambles to her feet. Swallowing panic, she darts her gaze wildly about the clearing, looking for somewhere, anywhere, to hide, but still there is nothing. 

Wings beat the air above her and the sun is blotted out. 

“The blaster!” shouts Veers from the edge of the forest. “Shoot that fucking thing!”

But she’s frozen. Pure primal terror. Her heart is choking in her throat. 

Veers shouts at her again, but she doesn’t hear the words. She can only hear the shriek bearing down on her from above. Resigned, she hopes death is quick. 

But just as the air behind her goes turbulent and the shriek deafens her right ear, something inexplicably compels her to turn and shove the panel away from her body like a battle shield.

This time, she only strikes its thick tail as it swoops away at the last second. It’s learning. And getting faster. 

She drops to the ground and crouches, holding the panel above her. The third attack comes almost immediately after the second. Dizzy, Leia can’t see how she can hold out much longer. 

“Throw me the blaster!” Veers shouts again, holding his hand out. “If you’re not going to shoot it, then godsdamnit, give it to me!”

Their eyes lock and time slows and she has a sudden surreal sense of peace.

He can do it. He won’t miss. 

She fumbles the blaster out of its holster and flings it to Veers. It falls just short, but he is able to reach out and grab it and fire just as the creature unleashes its attack. 

Braced for an impact, nothing comes. Leia instead watches sparks rain down around her and she flinches at a loud thud. 

The thing is dead, shot dead center between its slitted-pupiled eyes. It smells of singed flesh and sulfur, even more acrid than the stink of ozone from the blaster bolt.

She collapses and lets the panel fall to her side. Her breath will only come in short bursts and her chest feels like one big aneurysm about to rupture. 

Relief floods over her so intensely she fears she may weep. Cheeks stinging from from her smile, she turns to thank Veers and laugh with the sheer joy of survival, until she faces him.

And stares down the barrel of her own blaster. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw: attempted sexual assault in this chapter, which will be the only instance in this fic.

She really did know better than this.

Veers’ eyes are as cold as the piece of blued dedlanite in his hand. They stare, unblinking, through the sight of her blaster. 

 _Her_ blaster. The one she’d just kriffing thrown to him to save their lives. 

She sighs sharply and one corner of her mouth upturns in a sardonic smile. _This is what I get for three seconds of blind trust._

“Here is what is going to happen, Princess: first, you’re going to give me your canteen, which I know isn’t empty. Throw it here.”

Moving slowly, she retrieves the flask from under her poncho and tosses it to him. 

Taking neither his eyes nor the blaster off her, he unscrews the lid with just the fingers of his shooting hand and gulps down the remainder of the water. He wipes his wet mouth with the back of his hand and throws the flask back at her feet. “Now, you will take that with you and fill it and bring it back here.”

The nerve. She’s faced down Governor Tarkin and Darth Vader and the entire Imperial Senate. She’s not intimidated by this pickle-nosed creep. “Or maybe I’ll take it with me and and leave you here and not come back.”

“Would you like to make bets on how long you last without a blaster? Just pay me before you leave.”

“You’d be surprised how well I can take care of myself, General.”

“Well, I suppose we are about to find out just how well, aren’t we? Go on, get up.”

Biting back a groan, she swipes up the canteen and pulls herself to a standing position. The blood from her nose has slowed, and it tickles on its way down to her chin. Her lips taste of bitter copper. 

“Off you go then,” He gestures to the trees with the blaster. 

“This is your last chance, you know.”

“Are you serious? For what?” 

“For putting that down and letting me go before my team finds me here. One of whom is an ill-tempered Wookiee, and might I add, _extremely_ bitter about the Empire’s enslavement of his planet.”

“The sun is setting soon, Princess. Best be on your way. Lots of dangerous creatures out there after dark.”

“I hope you’re dinner for one of them.”

She starts walking, her ankle throbbing with each step. She can do this. She has to. She’ll find the water, then make her decision about whether or not to come back. 

Veers calls after her. “Princess?”

She slows in response but doesn’t look at him. “What?”

“Be careful.”

“Oh, that’s rich. Then give me my blaster.”

He grunts. “Not _that_ careful.”

___

 

It’s a universally accepted truth that a single man of wealth must be looking for a wife. Or so that stupid old saying went.

Unless, it seemed, that wealth came from gambling and cargo smuggling and a generous cash reward for rescuing a certain member of the Alderaanian royal household from an Imperial detention block. 

Leia didn’t know how big Han’s nest egg was, nor did she care; what did matter to her was that it was enough to keep him from going back to his old life in the spacelanes. That said something. (Though Lando’s uncharacteristically harsh admonishments whenever Han would start waxing nostalgic about bamboozling bounty hunters and outwitting boarding patrols and—stars help any and everyone in the Alliance with ears—that damned Kessel Run story probably said something, too.) 

And by finally hanging up his ratty old pilot gloves and filling the Falcon’s smuggling holds with critical supplies for the Rebellion, one could be forgiven for believing this indicated a readiness for Han to live on the up and up and finally settle down. 

If anything, though, Han was more restless than ever since waking up from his stint as Jabba’s favorite wall hanging. 

That first night at Jabba’s palace, she’d been so sure they would be together as long as the universe allowed. She knew it when she’d first held him, helpless as a newborn, still sticky with carbonite residue and shivering with hypothermia. She knew it when Luke showed up, obviously with a plan, but one that was mercurial and a mystery even to her. 

She knew it when she’d strangled the life out of the slimy, perverted worm that had put her in a metal tit sling and slave chains. When she’d watched Jabba heave forward and take his final putrid breath, she knew nothing could keep her away from Han now that they were reunited. 

Stepping over roots and fallen branches, her shadow long on the sun-dappled ground, she imagines Han as an old man: white-haired and weathered, maybe a little slower on the draw—and getting out of a chair—but still rangy and handsome and brimming with anodyne sarcasm and that same old deadpan waggery.

 _Respectable_. Mostly. She can’t help but smile at the irony.

She used to wonder what their future would hold. Would there be children? A cozy home somewhere safe in a galaxy finally at peace?

And then her hard-earned cynicism would invariably rear its head and wonder, would there be sadness? More injustice and war and restlessness and death?

She is tired. Tired, and thirsty. This is no time for her mind to wander; her survival depends completely on finding water, and finding it quickly. 

Her shadow is even longer now than it was just a few minutes ago. Nightfall can’t be far away, and the thought of being alone in this primeval forest in the dark makes her stomach tie itself into a knot. She glances at the navfinder to make sure she’s still on the right course. The water source should be about two hundred meters ahead and she scans the distance as best she can through the trees. 

That’s when she sees a flash of movement up ahead, green camo—a poncho, just like hers. 

Luke--It has to be Luke! 

The pain of her ankle silenced by adrenaline, she starts forward to catch him before he gets too  far ahead. She shouts his name, begs him to stop, wait for her, don’t leave—

An engine starts up and almost immediately shuts back off. Then, the unmistakable static of vocoderized helmet comms:

“Did you hear that? It sounded like it came from back that way.”

“Who in Mustafar’s lava flows would be all the way out here?”

“I don’t know, but we’d better check it out.”

Leia throws herself to the ground just as she sees the flash of white from the first Imperial scout trooper emerging from behind a massive tree. She lies as still as a groundhare and tries not to hyperventilate as she listens to the crunches of boots on pebbles and dead leaves grow louder. 

“Over there! I just saw something.”

“It was probably just a deer.”

“I hope it _is_ a deer so we can bring it back for chow. I’m so fuckin’ sick of protein bars.”

“You and me both.”

 _Crunch, crunch_ , pause. _Crunch, crunch_ —then, the squelch of a blaster and a bolt of red plasma flies right over her head, close enough to feel its heat. Ozone withers in the air. 

“You saw something?”

“I thought I did…”

Sithspit, they’re walking straight to her. There is no way they won’t see her. There’s no way out of this except to run. 

A loud crack sounds and a heavy tree branch crashes to the ground somewhere behind the scouts, making them startle and curse. 

“Aldera’s ashes!” one of them exclaims as the other one laughs, “I hate this fuckin’ place! Let’s just get out of here.”

There is a pause. “Hold on a second.” 

They go quiet again and Leia hears the click of a blaster rifle being raised and cradled against armor into firing position. The scout’s footsteps are very close. 

Fern fronds swish aside as plastoid-sheathed legs come into view.

 _Now_. 

She pushes off the ground and into a blind run. Fuck the ankle, fuck the pain, it’s run or die. 

There’s a thick copse of vine-choked trees ahead and her field of vision narrows to just that spot, that one goal. If she can make it there, then she has a chance of losing them and getting away. 

In her wild sprint, all thrumming eardrums and surging blood, her view jounces up and down so hard that all she registers are peripheral streaks of brown and green as she focuses solely on the target of the thicket. It’s close now, so close. 

She realizes she’s going to make it. Her heart leaps as her lungs burn. 

Then she’s inside a halo of blue and something prickles the skin of her back before everything goes black.

___

 

Well, she’s been here before.

She’s on the ground, looking up at the tree canopy and a rapidly darkening purple sky. Her head feels like it will burst like an overripe waterfruit should she be stupid enough to try and get up. 

And there’s the nausea. Just like the last time she was hit with a stun blast, but she swears this time it’s worse. 

“She’s awake. Get the stun cuffs.”

“Uh huh,” says the other scout, the one wearing the camo poncho that she thought had been Luke’s over his armor, digging in a speederbike pannier. 

The first scout, the one wearing an orange epaulet, leans over her, regarding her through red-tinted goggle lenses. He tilts his head to the side like a curious hound. “Well, hello there,” he says with a trace of an Akivian accent that hasn’t yet been completely drummed out of him. “Are you all right, ma’am?”

She hesitates, then nods. Who does he think she could be?

He rears a leg back and kicks her hard on the only working ankle she has left. “Then get up. Rebel scum.”

Ah. Okay then. 

She pulls herself up to a sitting position and forces back the urge to vomit. Her head throbs. 

“Got separated from your team, huh?” 

“Maybe they dumped her here,” says Camo Poncho, rummaging through the bags. “Rebels have about as much loyalty as the Hutts.”

Epaulet nudges her with his rifle. “Where’s your blaster?”

“I don’t carry one. I…I don’t like them.” There are times for bold defiance and times for deception. She has few cards left to play and feigning innocence seems like the best strategy.

“You expect me to believe you came here on a commando mission without a weapon?” says Epaulet. 

“I’m no commando. I was only sent to gather intel, not make contact. I didn’t expect to run into anyone.”

“What happened to your face?” Epaulet’s tone has an edge like he’s not buying her act. 

Leia resists the urge to sneer. This act is beginning to wear thin for her, too. “I fell.”

Epaulet stares at her in silence for several uncomfortable seconds. He’s still sussing her out, gauging how much of a threat she is. She can practically see his brain running through his protocols under the square bucket on his head. 

“Where are those cuffs, already?”

Poncho stops his rummaging and his shoulders visibly sag under his armor. “They’re not here, sir. But they were listed on the supply count at BTOD.”

Epaulet rasps a swear under his breath. “Comm ahead to Jenth Squad. Have them send somebody here with a kriffing pair.”

“For _her_? C’mon.”

“Is there a problem, soldier?” Epaulet growls. “Do it. And take that godsdamn rag off before they get here. You know that isn’t regulation.”

“Sir…just…permission to have a word?” 

Epaulet joins Poncho, but remains facing Leia with his blaster pointed in her direction. 

Their helmet comm volume can only go so low and she can make out every third word or so: they’ve been busted stylo-whipping supply lists before. Involving another squad in this latest fuckup will definitely bring down some heat and make them lose face in front of the regular stormies. All for this Rebel bitch? They can handle this one on their own.

It feels like Life Day and Leia couldn’t have been given a bigger present. 

Epaulet steps back over to her. “You are hereby declared a prisoner of His Majesty’s Imperial Army.” His delivery could not have been more disaffected; yet another hint. “Now get up.”

She does as he says and plays up her limp. _I’m just a weak little thing_ , she says to them in her head. _Not a threat at all_. 

“You know, we don’t have to bring her back right away,” says Poncho. “We could let off a little steam first.”

“‘Field debriefing’, huh?”

Leia’s throat tightens and her heart sinks into her boots.

“Yeah, okay. Just make it fast.” Epaulet leans back against a speeder. His grip on the rifle loosens ever so slightly and his carriage relaxes as he puts his weight on the back of his heels. 

“Yessir.” 

Leia recoils at the leering tone, unmistakable even through the vocoder. Her gut twists and anger boils up into her gorge. This is _not_ going to happen. 

Poncho moves in close and shoves her to the ground with a push to her shoulder that’s nearly a punch. She lands hard on her back but her rage has made her hard and numb and she feels nothing. 

She is literally seeing red. An aura of crimson rings her peripheral vision as Poncho leans over her and she doesn’t remember this happening before, not ever. It is the red of an open wound; a synesthesia of pure hatred. 

She knows she will kill him. She sees it, and it feels like watching a dream playing out and doubling reality. 

Poncho is still pointing his blaster rifle at her as stands between her legs and kicks her knees apart. 

“Don’t be scared, sweetheart,” calls Epaulet, still leaning back on his heels. “It won’t be so bad if you don’t fight.”

Poncho starts to pull the green camo cloth over his head, shifting the rifle to one hand as he does so. When his helmet disappears under the synthcanvas, Leia moves. 

She grabs hold of the rifle barrel and yanks it down hard as she kicks Poncho square in the codpiece. The blaster rips easily out of his hands as he falls backwards, his helmet still caught under the poncho. 

She sits up and fires. The dream/real time slows and she watches the red bolt exit the blaster’s muzzle and follow a four meter trajectory into Epaulet’s left goggle lens, where it shatters into a spray of bright sparks. Epaulet flies backward over the speeder bike and clatters to the ground alongside his rifle like a marionette with its strings cut. 

She shifts her aim to the right, where Poncho has fallen, still struggling in the snare of his own clothing. He roars like a cornered animal and makes a grab for the holdout blaster in his boot holster and finds it. 

It’s too late. By the time his glove tips reach the blaster, Leia has already fired. He takes one bolt to center mass followed by a second to the faceplate. He collapses to the side, still half-tangled in his own poetic justice. 

The only sounds are of insects and frogs in the trees in the civil twilight. 

She shoulders the rifle and limps to where Poncho lies, his plastoid carapace still smoking. She nudges him onto his back with her boot and checks him over. 

She really has been given a gift; he has rations and water and micro cords in his utility belt pouches, along with a water purifying unit and a med kit. Nearly everything she could need. 

The first thing she takes is the water and drains the plasti-jug dry. Her tongue absorbs the moisture like desert sand and she needs more, but it’ll have to wait. 

She roots through the speeder bike panniers and hits yet more pay dirt; there are a couple more ration packs, a flare shooter, two extra blaster power packs, a flashlight, and—yes in-fucking deed!—a pocket porta-shelter. 

She lifts her head up and does a quick visual survey. For all intents and purposes, it is night. It is far too dark, and she is far too wary to try to steer a speeder bike when she can’t see more than a few feet in front of her. Those things are probably carrying locators on them, anyway. 

Someone will eventually come along for these scouts, and it’s going to be pretty obvious they weren’t in an accident. She needs to be long gone from the area before they get there and start a manhunt. 

She trades out her utility belt for Poncho’s and unfastens the speeder’s panniers and slings them over her shoulders. She starts limping northward, hoping that if she finds the water source and follows its feeder stream, it will eventually lead her to the rest of her strike team. If she needs water, so do they, and it’s not like any of them came ready for a three-day camping trip. 

It’s not until she passes a fallen branch, split down its ragged middle like a greenstick fracture, that she remembers Veers. 

Nine hells. 

It doesn’t bother her that he’s injured and alone. And it’s not that she feels some sort of pity for him. She’s certainly never had a savior complex. But she realizes his value. Imagines the intelligence goldmine he could be. The humiliating blow to the Empire and the boon to the Alliance it would be to have this particular army general in their possession. 

Nine stupid bloody bastard sonofabitch hells. 

She turns back and heads south-southeast.


	4. Chapter 4

She nearly passes the clearing, it’s so dark out. If it hadn’t been for a piece of the AT-ST glinting in the diffuse moonlight, she’d have missed it completely. She’s coming at it from the opposite angle from which she left, and slowly she starts to recognize the landmarks. She creeps quietly from behind what’s left intact of the walker’s head, into what should be Veers’ view. 

She expects him to say something, or at least make some small noise where he lays. But there is nothing. Maybe he’s dead and her earlier crisis of conscience can be marked up as a minor inconvenience.

But the bastard is breathing, his hand still lightly curled around the blaster. He doesn’t stir when she snatches it away and re-holsters it on her belt. 

She could do it now. She could shoot him and leave his body here to rot like all the kids they had to leave on Hoth. It wouldn’t recompense for all the lives lost, but it would at least be something. 

But, she admits to herself, it wouldn’t be enough. Shooting him as he laid unconscious was too kind. And she knew it would not satisfy her. 

She wants to see his face when the doors to the detention block shut behind him. She wants to watch what little light remains in his shifty eyes snuff out when he realizes he’ll never go home again. 

She wants to see him utterly destroyed. 

 

The porta-shelter goes up without too much difficulty, and while small, it seems sturdy enough to keep out the elements for a night or two. She wouldn’t bet on anything beyond that—the Empire’s production philosophy has always seemed to favor volume over quality and this tent seems no exception to that credo. 

She snaps the heat-stick and hangs it from a small plastoid hook. It glows to life and suffuses the shelter with warmth and dim light. She drags the panniers inside and takes a sip of water and a bite of an energy bar before considering how to move Veers. She can’t think of any way to get him in the shelter without yanking on any broken bones and decides it’s probably best that he’s unconscious. 

Maybe he’ll be fine outside. It’s not freezing out, and it’s not like she’s any safer from predators in this flimsy tent than he is beneath the brush. If anything, the glow from the heat-stick is probably a neon sign for an all-night diner for predators but she’ll be damned if she’s going to lie here in the cold and dark waiting to be attacked and devoured like some godsdamned animal. At the very least, not until she finishes supper. 

The rations taste like pet biscuits but after a day’s hiking she needs the calories. The wrapper made a fucking racket when she’d torn it open, and she wonders at the wisdom of issuing noisy rations to scouts, of all people. Yet more Imperial technical claptrap, she supposes. You could hear a Stormtrooper’s armor clacking at two klicks away.

She chews mindlessly. She knows she should be formulating a plan, working out how to get Veers back to the strike team and into a cell, but she can’t. Her brain isn’t working. She’s so tired. 

She lies back and props her head on a pannier. Maybe after a five-minute nap everything will be clearer and she can think. 

 

An enormous boom wakes her and her first thought is that they’ve found her—the Empire is dropping bombs from orbit onto her little tent. Earth is raining down onto the synth canvas and surely the next grav-bomb will turn her campsite into a crater. 

Then she realizes that the explosions are thunder and the raining earth is, in fact, rain. Her heart slows and she reaches for the canteen to relieve her sleep-parched mouth. Thank the Force for provisions and a dry spot in the weather. She lays her head back and starts to enjoy the loud pattering of heavy rain on the tent when she remembers Veers. 

Gods _damn_ him. She grimaces and grinds her teeth. 

Groaning, she unfastens the tent opening and crawls on her hands and knees out of the shelter. Her hands squelch in the slimy muck and her back stings with pelting cold rain as she squirms her way to where Veers lies sodden in the bushes. 

He’s still not moving. Breathing, but nothing more. Maybe he’s a lost cause; she might go through all the trouble and pain of dragging him into the tent only for him to die in there right after. Then what? She’s stuck with a giant soaking wet dead man taking up her only shelter. And she thought she hated him when they were both dry. 

Unfortunately, it’s worth taking the chance he’ll survive. She gets a firm grip on the round collar of his cuirass and pulls hard. He barely budges. The rain is coming down so hard that she feels the water running down her face may suffocate her. 

She gets the sole of one boot against a rock and uses it for leverage when she tries again. She yanks harder this time, without regard for his injuries, and is able to drag him out of the shallow hole he’s dug himself into and onto his back. 

She gets on her feet and bends over and hauls him by the cuirass through the mud, which now acts as a helpful lubricant. Several moments and many grunted curses later, she has him at the threshold of the tent. Resigning herself to misery, she climbs inside and drags him the rest of the way in, waterlogged clothes and boots and mud and all. 

She gasps in great lungfuls of air after the physical strain, gods—he smells so bad she can taste it. He’s like a musk ox that’s been shot and stuck for three days in a bog hole. Or a Death Star garbage masher. She chokes back a gag, not sure if it’s from the smell or the general proximity of him. 

“About bloody time,” he mumbles from face-down on the floor. 

She nearly laughs out of frustration and exhaustion. “You’re awake?”

“Well I am now.”

“You utter _bastard_ …after I just dragged you in here—”

“Chivalry isn’t dead after all.”

“I only brought you in here because I thought you were nearly dead.”

“Only half-dead, sorry. And with two more broken ribs than before, thanks.”

“I should have broken six more along with your neck.”

“If you like…I’m in no position to stop you.”

“Keep tempting me,” she snorts. 

“Bad for your new bounty hunter business, I’m afraid. But I won’t fight you.”

“It wouldn’t be wise. You’re in bad enough shape as it is.”

“Been worse,” he slurs, and passes out. 

She makes a noise of disgust and curls into a fetal position with her back to him, clutching the blaster against her chest. Most horrible of horrible ideas, bringing his stinking carcass in here. And his infuriating sarcasm. She doesn’t know which is worse. 

Lying on her side, the repetitive din of rain pelting the tent, the dogged narcosis of exhaustion begins to overtake her. Sleep won’t wait. _Find me,_ she pleads to Luke in her mind just before she fades. _Please hurry…_

 

She wakes just after sunrise and a hard, dreamless sleep. Veers is in the same position she’d left him in, nearly silent, but still breathing. She hauls her aching body from the small tent on her hands and knees. The ground is still muddy from the night before but it doesn’t even matter at this point. She is nearly as filthy as Veers, minus the stench. Or so she hopes, anyway. Not that she’s looking to impress anyone. 

After wrapping her ankle with a bandage and a breakfast of quickmeal bread from Poncho’s supplies, she strikes out with the navfinder and takes a circuitous route back in the direction of the water source. She’s careful not to get within a kilometer of the site where she’d killed the scouts; surely a team must have responded overnight when they hadn’t returned to base. She couldn’t risk them still being there right now. 

After a painful hour’s walk, she finds it—a stream that snakes through a tiny clearing between the trees. Ordinarily it was probably easy to miss, but the rains have made it turgid and swollen and the current surges over its shallow banks and it’s beautiful. 

She falls to her knees beside the rushing water and washes her hands and her face of caked-on mud and blood, and Force knows what else after manhandling Veers the night before. The cold water is shocking and exquisite on her skin. 

Once the worst of the grime is gone, she fills the two large scout trooper canteens she now carries and the smaller one she’d brought with her on the mission. Enough to last a day, maybe two if she is conservative. She’ll keep the smaller canteen hidden under her poncho for herself.

She wraps her wet braids back in her helmet and returns to camp. 

 

There is a simple and elemental comfort in poking a stick in a fire, which Leia has forgotten until now. 

The flames of her little campfire lick at the cool, clammy air, defiant in their affable heat. Her clothes and hair have dried and the warmth melts some of the pain from her ankle, which has turned a sullen shade of purple beneath the bandage.

She sips a steaming caf (one of the panniers held a packet of insta-crystals and a plastisteel cup) and it tastes like liquid dogshit, but it right now it’s as good hot in her belly as the finest Chandrila mountain blend. 

It’s a small stolen moment of serenity until Veers shatters it with roaring groan from within the tent. A woodgrouse Leia hadn’t realized was there clucks and flaps away into the trees, giving her a start. 

Veers moans again, loudly. Then the curses come. 

Leia puts down her cup and hobbles quickly to the tent. “Shut up!” she hisses. “You’re making too much noise!”

He groans another curse, this time at her. “I can’t stay in this position, I need to move…my arm—I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Curse at me like that and you can die in there for all I care.”

He makes a high-pitched noise as she imagines him wincing. “Please, Princess—I need you to help me. Drag me out, I don’t care—for the love of hell, just get me out of here and off my arm.”

“You’re a bag of durasteel bricks and it’s not worth it to me getting hurt just to make you comfortable.”

“Princess, if you don’t drag me out of here right now I will piss in this tent.”

“The hell you will!” She grimaces and reaches into the shelter. “Gods, I hate you.” She grabs him by the boots and hauls him out of the tent screaming like a man being gutted. 

He rolls onto his back and cradles his broken arm, his affected hand twice the size of the other. He weeps silently, tearlessly. She sees his leg for the first time. The right thigh is a red mess of blood and tissue, a smelly wound gaping in his torn uniform. 

Aldera’s ashes. She’s going to have to waste the bacta on this sorry piece of roadkill. And the fucking water. 

Silently cursing him, she dumps out her still-steaming caf and fills the cup from the canteen.


End file.
